Alan Formanek founded the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival 16 years ago

Originally published: February 20, 2013

Not surprisingly for the founding director of the long-running Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, utilitarian rides have always appealed to Alan Formanek.

Specifically, ones ideally suited for climbing trips.

We’re in just such a vehicle heading up Cypress Mountain in West Vancouver — albeit with no crampons or ice axes on board — as Formanek takes a break from the rigours of running the festival to test out a 2013 Subaru XV Crosstrek.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Formanek came to Canada in 1992 with his wife and daughter in search of new mountains to climb, to learn English and to turn the key on a new life.

“I dreamed about leaving Slovakia and learning English,” he says, noting that Canada appealed to him for obvious reasons. “It’s a great big space and there are lots of places to climb.

“I had heard about Squamish, and a friend of mine who was on a climbing trip in 1989 showed me slides of North Vancouver, and it looked like a great place to me.

“Big city experience but also close to the mountains.”

When it came to cars, Formanek says when he was a kid they were looked upon as a means to an end in his homeland, not as they were for North American teens in the Sixties and Seventies.

“We didn’t have access to those kind of cars,” he says of the Corvettes, Mustangs and muscle cars that fuelled young imaginations here. “We didn’t have access to magazines about these cars.”

Instead, Formanek grew up with Skodas and Trabants, the latter the infamous East German cars that are often used as analogies for the pitfalls of centralized planning. That and the fact their bodies were made from Duroplast, a material comprising a number of fibres, including cotton and paper.

“I remember my father buying his first Trabant in 1966,” Formanek says as he downshifts the Crosstrek’s smooth 5-speed gearbox as we approach a switchback. “And on the first day we went for a spin and had two accidents.”

One involved a side-swipe collision with a motorcyclist; the other occurred five minutes later when Formanek’s father spotted a hole in the road ahead, slammed on his brakes and Alan’s brother flew from the back seat to the front, banging his face against the dash.

No such drama on our Big Wheels drive in the all-new XV Crosstrek, Subaru’s latest in a long line of all-wheel drive vehicles.

“This is a great car for climbers and people who want to get into the mountains,” he says. “It drives really well, and the all-wheel drive system is ideal for backcountry travel.”

Growing up in Eastern Europe while still under Communist rule, as mentioned, cars weren’t at the forefront of a young man’s mind.

“Back then in Czechoslovakia you got your driver’s licence at age 18, but we didn’t have that many cars to drive,” explains Formanek. “My parents had a car, but they wouldn’t allow me to drive it. I eventually convinced my father to let me drive his car — but by then I was 25.”

One of the modern-day ironies of outdoor adventurers is as much as they might eschew the combustible engine and all it stands for, without it they wouldn’t be able to access their beloved back-country.

For Formanek, that wasn’t a problem in his younger years as Eastern Europe’s train network back then connected many of the cities with mountain villages. And the fact that he lived under Communist rule and belonged to a climbing club meant he rode the trains for free.

“We could go anywhere we wanted, even East Germany,” he explains. “All we had to do was book our tickets a week in advance.”

Formanek certainly doesn’t long for those days, but admits something has been lost.

“Everything is quicker now. In the old days we’d get a train at six in the morning, travel for three hours, hike to the base of our climb, then climb for four or five hours, hike back to the station and get home very late at night.

“Today, we leave at noon, drive for an hour, climb for a couple of hours and are home for dinner.”

Heading back down Cypress, Formanek steers to his Central Lonsdale apartment to get back to work — the film festival he founded 16 years ago is in full swing at North Vancouver’s Centennial Theatre, it’s longtime home venue, and its two Vancouver locations, the Rio Theatre and Pacific Cinematique.

The 10-day festival wraps Sunday night with a VIMFF Fundraiser party a the Rio, but there’s still time to catch some great films and guest speakers, For a complete schedule of events, visit http://www.vimff.org